Cassie From Tar Beach

Made by and When: Faith Ringgold/MerryMakers, Inc. 1994

Material: Cloth doll and mini book, Tar Beach

Height: 13 inches

Hair, Eyes, Mouth: Three black yarn braids with red ribbons at the ends, screen-printed facial features

Clothes: Wears a removable yellow dress of red-paint-stroke-printed fabric and a red waist sash that ties in the back; the feet are bare.

Other: In collaboration with MerryMakers, Inc., contemporary African American mixed-media artist, activist, author, and quilter, Faith Ringgold brought the protagonist in the book Tar Beach to three-dimensional inanimate life. The doll/book set includes the 13-inch cloth doll designed by Ringgold and a miniature hard copy of the Caldecott Honor Book, Tar Beach. Cassie is a 3^rd grader who likes going to her “tar beach” and pretending that she can fly high. Cassie’s tar beach is actually the rooftop of her Harlem apartment building where she often goes to spend time with her family and where she also dreams big dreams for herself and her family.

In addition to the 13-inch version of Cassie from Tar Beach, which was mass-produced, an unknown (quite possibly ultra-limited) number of life-size Cassie dolls exist. Ringgold gave one to Chelsea Clinton in 1994. The artist is seen in a photograph in her home with a life-size Cassie in the background. (See the photo in the gallery.)

Gallery

Cassie from Tar Beach includes the mini book, *Tar Beach*. Faithringgold’s art is incorporated in the box design.

“Faith Ringgold at her dining table in Englewood, N.J., surrounded by her work ‘California Dah #3, 1983,’ envisioning what her mother experienced when she died. ‘I always have to feel something to paint it,’ Ms. Ringgold says. The doll is Cassie, from her children’s book, *Tar Beach*.” Credit…Meron Tekie Menghistab for *The New York Times* [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/arts/design/faith-ringgold-art.html]

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2 thoughts on “Cassie From Tar Beach”

Oh yes…I have Tar Beach and Cassie❣️I have several of her books in my collection because before I had a passion for dolls, my collection consisted of picture books. I wish people knew that these have great value people of any age. I have loved Faith Ringgold’s work since I first saw a quilt at the Studio Museum in Harlem about forty years ago. On my wall hangs a very large framed print of her Williams College quilt bordered by a narrative about the racism and anti-semitism found there many decades past. If small, cruel minds were paying attention, her brilliance in print could be challenging to find in school and public libraries.

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